The essay was written quite a long time ago. I’m sure he still swears, but his point is valid - saying something is “bullshit” is easy and reflexive and trying to avoid using that word means you have to explain why it is bullshit. So he has a show called “Bullshit”, but the whole show is devoted to trying to show why.
My view is one of profanity conservation - that these are powerful words that lose their power with overuse. If you’re someone who is known for not swearing, when folks hear you swear they’ll know that you really mean it.
My pet peeve is overuse of “motherfucker”. It is the most profoundly offensive term available in the English language. And if you call your best friend one, what have you got in reserve when you actually need it?
It is an easy out for someone looking for one.
I take pride in being able to verbally eviscerate someone without ever having to use profanity. Like a martial arts master taking out an opponent using only one hand.
I actually have two important points I’d like to make on this topic. The first is regarding the use of swearing. As others have pointed out, I think swearing is useful in some contexts, but in others it’s overused. One nice saying that I think rounds it up well is “Swearing is a crutch for a poor vocabulary.” I try to keep that in mind and limit my swearing. However, that said, I also think there are times when there simply isn’t another word. Sometimes “fuck” is the only word, but really, that’s not very often, and it’s usually really only the case in very emotionally heated but safe conditions (ie, not in a fight).
I also think that the reason we tell kids not to swear is because, more often than not, kids don’t have the level of nuance when it comes to social context and they tend to use it, not because it expresses the conveyed meaning, but because it gets attention. Frankly, it’s just a lot easier to tell them not to swear at all, and avoid the problem of offending people than to try to explain in any meaningful way the different social contexts in which cursing is acceptable or not.
That said, though I don’t have kids myself, when explaining things to my neice or nephew, and from some parents I’ve met who I’ve seen with very well mannered kids, one thing that I’ve found that helps explain concepts to kids is simply avoiding using negative language. That is, don’t tell them why they shouldn’t do something, but instead why they should do something.
For example, if you say “You shouldn’t curse because it offends people.” you’re not so much telling them not to do it as you are telling them that when they do, they will offend people. IOW, you’re giving them incentive to do it, and it often has little effect on their behavior. If, however, you say “You should only use polite language because it makes those around you more comfortable.” or whatever other reasoning you want to give, you not only avoid giving them incentive to do otherwise, but you postively reinforce the behavior you want (rather than negatively reinforcing the behavior you don’t want) and it actually makes you think a bit about WHY you want them doing it. I think it helps a lot if they do good things because they like the rewards rather than simply avoid doing bad things because they’re afraid of the consequences.
Brilliant. We are *so *doing this. The “foreign language” part will win over my husband, the linguist, for sure.
OK. You’ve given me several well-articulated versions of “Swear selectively”; here are my favorite bits:
That’s all true. But this other thing is true, too:
I swear, sometimes casually and prolifically. I don’t have a limited vocabulary, though. Any kid of mine is going to notice both those things, and will probably perceive some hypocrisy if I give him the “fine wine” line and leave it at that. So… why do I swear?
My degree is in theater, and I’m originally from the west coast, but I’ve made my living in educational publishing most of my adult life, with a long stint in Texas. Working with nice Texas schoolteacher ladies in a cubicle farm, I really missed casual cussing! I got a new boss after a while and I vividly remember the relief and delight I felt when, one day, our immediate workgroup of four or five people were having a meeting and all somehow, by osmosis, realized that no one present would be offended if we let a little shit fly. We swore a little at every weekly meeting after that. Not a lot, and it never spread to the larger department, but oh, it felt good! Still—why?
One obvious answer is that it’s mildly transgressive; that it was a safety valve for us disempowered midlevel workers to express disdain for the banality of corporate indignities, blah blah blah whatever. But… well. I have to think about that some more. Some of *this *is in there:
Another part of my question is even less clear to me so far. Granted that what a kid REALLY needs to know, especially when young, is that swearing is a sometimes thing —how do you explain what makes some words swear words and others, even those with the same denotations, not swear words? Or, as Thudlow Boink put it:
I think **dangermom **touched on what was really going through my mind in listening to the obnoxious kids the other night.
There *is *something distinctively offensive about some swear words that goes beyond the arbitrary. Poop/crap/shit is pretty arbitrary, of course, but sex/boink/fuck isn’t. “Fuck him up the ASS!” hollered as swearing-for-entertainment particularly pissed me off because it strikes me as violent or homophobic. Not to mention that sex talk from kids bothers me more than potty talk.
Swearing has more than social power, if used sparingly. It can also fight pain.
There was a study on pain, recently reported in a bunch of science blogs, using the immersion of a subject’s arm into freezing water. People who swore were able to keep their arms in the water longer than people who didn’t, unless they had diluted the effect of swearing by developing a manner of speaking that used profanity as a matter of course. In that case, swearing brought no relief.
And just for an excuse to quote Pratchett:
“When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’” ~Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
My kids are the same about “stupid.” Apparently “stupid” is a huge no-no in school. While I haven’t come to blows over it, I have had conversations with teachers where we’ve said “in our house, we call a spade a spade. If its a stupid idea, might as well not mince words.”
People are going to judge them based on the kind of language they use. They should try not to start forming verbal habits until they’re old enough to decide what kind of impression they’d like to give off. However, it’s not really that hard for a smart person to code-switch based on context, if it comes to that.
I, FWIW, swear all the fucking time, and I don’t have any problems not swearing around certain people.